


Viva Forever

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canonical Character Death, F/M, First Kiss, Introspection, Not Canon Compliant, Out of Character, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 11:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13076055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: On my part, I desired deeply for her to be a little more similar to her sister, to find a valid excuse to what I had just done. But there weren’t the straight blond hair of Narcissa under my hands, not her lazy blue eyes to stare at me, not her cold to freeze the room we were in.





	Viva Forever

Cissy and I didn’t belong to each other anymore, it was a matter of fact.

There was just emptiness between us, and a thousand silences that neither her nor I dared to fill.

She never cared much about my success as a Death Eater as I did, she just wanted for me to come back home alive.

This was her only demand.

And yet, since my return from Azkaban, I hadn’t been alive anymore.

I had fallen into the shadow of myself, into the fleeting glares I saw in the eyes of the people I met, into the voices behind my back, into the word ‘coward’, that so often accompanied my name.

And I couldn’t take it anymore.

Narcissa didn’t think I was a coward, nor she blamed me for the little control I had showed at the Ministry.

She hated me because, after the humiliations I was forced to take, after the oppression, after imprisonment and mockeries, I still kept quiet, my eyes low.

She was a Black, and the Black women didn’t know the word submission.

My fault in her eyes, was a lack of rebellion.

Rebellion that, she didn’t realize that, would’ve meant that death she feared so much.

And so she left, without feeling the need to discuss, to find a solution. Because she knew I wouldn’t have changed my attitude, that I had loved her, but that it wasn’t a love strong enough to make me welcome death with open arms, to make me carry out a betrayal which I was sure I would’ve regretted.

I found myself alone all of a sudden, without grounds to keep me from falling free toward an abyss which I wouldn’t have been able to rise back from.

And then, in the darkness I found myself in, I was surprised by a soul, black more than the very same night that drenched my existence.

A soul that was dividing itself from its body, a soul that didn’t have a reason to exist.

A rebel soul, unlike Cissy’s, yet stained by a trace of alluring madness.

Bellatrix.

Bellatrix Lestrange, the first one to mock me and to profess my uselessness and cowardice with the Dark Lord, the first to make me fall, had also been the one who had held out a hand to make me stand again.

And just because, even though the madness fogged her mind, Bellatrix was still able to suffer.

It was an afternoon, almost by chance, when we were alone together.

I wasn’t very comfortable with the whole situation, at all: I knew all too well how much boredom affected her, to the point of sharpening her malice and her viciousness.

I was almost afraid of the words she would’ve said when she sat in front of me, on the armchair in the living room.

“It’s been a month.” she started off, her tone empty. I raised my eyes on her, clenching my teeth.

I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it with anyone, for sure not with her. And yet not answering was not a possibility I could consider.

“I am able to see the time passing on my own, Bellatrix, thank you.” I said, sharp.

She didn’t react, she just stared in front of her.

“I would’ve never thought my tame little sister could’ve shown such a mental strength. I’m quite proud of her.” she went on, twisting her lips in a fading smile. I breather, trying not to show the anger her words were causing me. She waited for me to reply, before speaking again, a sarcastic smile on her face.

“We’re all forsaken, Lucius. Abandoned to ourselves.” she declared, as if she was talking more to herself than me. I got curious.

I didn’t really understand what she was talking about. She had all she could desire.

She had power, respect.

And madness, which didn’t allow her to grasp the more sordid sided of existence.

“I don’t see what you’re complaining about, Bellatrix.” I pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

She looked at me, and I saw a glimpse in her eyes. Rage? Pain?

Things that didn’t suit her very much, not the vision I had of a woman whose humanity was slowly fading.

“Do you really believe I don’t have any issue of my own? The almighty Bellatrix Lestrange, right-hand woman to the Dark Lord?” she asked, still sarcastic. “You must know, Lucius, things aren’t always black and white. We all suffer, one way or the other. Even the crazy ones.” she said, bitter.

I stared long at her, controlling the mad temptation of getting closer.

I pondered. Bellatrix loved the Dark Lord, far more than she loved herself, and no one of us had ever failed to notice so.

I thought back to Rodolphus’ face when the two of them were too close, not physically but in intents also, to the hate he showed for his wife’s demeaning attitude.

And then I thought about Lord Voldemort, who took pride in the woman’s attentions, amusing himself in playing with her as if it was natural.

It was true, she had reasons to suffer not so different from mine. And in that moment I felt like my coldness was melting all of a sudden, to break the dam of a pain I had kept inside of me far too long. 

I took a deep breath, then I started speaking again.

“I’m sorry, Bellatrix.” I murmured, and not out of kindness toward her, but for decency toward myself, so little accustomed to such obvious shows of sensitivity.

She looked at me, smirking.

“I don’t really have a use for your sorrow, Lucius. I’d be content with your comprehension.” she hissed. “And that you’d show at least some humility, and understood that you’re not the only one left with nothing.” she said, bitter, frustrated, surrendered.

It was a moment.

I went closer, hugging her, realizing in her stiff reaction how unused she had grown to human warmth, to having arms surrounding her.

And yet, against all odds, she didn’t reject me.

She closed her eyes, as to pretend she wasn’t actually there, in that paradox, where she was showing a need for help which I never could’ve given to her.

I could just hug her, to let her see she was not a wreckage, or at least that I was one as much as her.

A few minutes passed before she decided to stand up, pulling away bluntly. She didn’t look me in the eyes, nor I her. I understood we were both humiliated by that simple gesture, but that we weren’t going to admit it, not even to ourselves.

On my part, I desired deeply for her to be a little more similar to her sister, to find a valid excuse to what I had just done. But there weren’t the straight blond hair of Narcissa under my hands, not her lazy blue eyes to stare at me, not her cold to freeze the room we were in.

There were black, rebellious curls, as rebellious as she was. The eyes, two pieces of coal, deep and endless, with green flashes in the middle of the iris.

I couldn’t say she was warmer than her sister, and yet I couldn’t feel any cold. She wasn’t uncaring, just disenchanted.

And I, as much as her, couldn’t really believe I had found someone to understand what I was feeling, the discomfort when I was with the Death Eaters, or even when I was alone, on my side of the bed, while the one next to mine was empty and cold.

Bellatrix was an unresolved mystery, alluring precisely because I knew nothing of her.

I would’ve wanted to dig inside of her, to unveil what was hidden behind those lifeless orbits that, years before, had taken the place of her eyes.

I felt the yearning of possession that didn’t belong anymore to Narcissa and I, since years, for that strange and deadly mental process so typical of mankind, for which when something’s yours you grow soon tired of it.

Exactly as Narcissa had grown tired of me and I of her, as our relationship had soothed the hunter instinct belonging to every man.

Bellatrix wasn’t mine, and I would’ve fought, and I would’ve put in it the last piece of soul I had left to have her.

We weren’t made to be this close, and yet we both desperately needed it, and this didn’t feel to catch mine nor her attention.

She came back to me, her steps slow and stilted, and when we were a few inches apart she took my face, violently, and she kissed me.

She put all the passion she had in it, all the craving she had for me to be someone else, to be Voldemort, to be anyone who could’ve given her some of that peace she had always been denier.

But, most of all, she wanted with that kiss to show she was in control of a situation that, we both understood it, had gotten out of hand.

But I let Bellatrix kiss me and I kissed her, because in that single kiss was enclosed the only thing that was keeping us afloat.

We held on one to the other, in a last desperate effort to survive.

 

~

 

It was war.

We both had vivid memories of the first time, we bore the markings of it.

As usual, mine where the markings of a coward, her of a martyr.

But with time I had grown accustomed to her mental supremacy over me, and I had accepted it.

I had found out the simplicity of not having to put myself up for discussion, of not having to look for fictional excuses.

Because she _knew._ She knew all about me, most of all what I kept from her.

I didn’t know how could she catch that sense of defeat in me, but she could, and it was enough for me.

That night, one of us wouldn’t have made it out as a winner, and we both knew that.

We fought, and for the first time we felt like we had something real to lose.

I couldn’t tear my eyes from her, even during the most challenging moments, even when the risk was too high for any distraction to be allowed.

But I couldn’t help it, on her face I read my redemption and the months spent getting over each other’s weaknesses, or at least confessing them.

Bella and I, that night, were fighting for ourselves, and not for what the Dark Lord wanted us to be.

We fought because we had found again the will to live, one in the other, in a completely unhoped way.

We still were the mad and the coward, and yet there was something more to us.

Something that had stuck on us, whether we wanted it or not, that wasn’t going to go away, that had grown during the long and boring nights, spent in a silence lacking of any pleasantness.

We were made of instinct, her and I, and yet that very same instinct consuming itself among sheets we weren’t able to warm, seemed to be binding us more than ever now, as if we really belonged to each other.

When I saw her, enclosed like in a hellish circle with that blood traitor, I froze. She never teared her eyes from those of her enemy but for a fraction of a second.

She stared at me. Briefly, deeply.

It wasn’t a request for help, which she arrogantly believed she didn’t need.

It was a mocking look, underlining the paradox of the whole situation.

And I stayed still.

I did nothing but look at her.

When she fell on the ground, a thousand images flowed through my mind.

Her face and Cissy’s overlapped, in a vortex of gloom, sordid, grotesque pictures.

Bellatrix was leaving me, has her sister had done.

I was alone, in the middle of that hallway, while everyone crowded the cornerstone of the battle.

I didn’t have a battle anymore.

I was motionless. I faced my destiny, in the form of Bella’s ghost that seemed to float around me, as an omen of failure.

I was a cold man, poisoned by life.

Her, as cold and as venomous as I, had soothed the demons growing inside of me.

And when she closed her eyes they burst, asking me to let go.

In that moment, I wanted to say I loved Bellatrix Lestrange, that I wanted to save her, that I wanted to see her face one more time.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Life felt hatred for me and fleet, always.

Left alone, with regret and with my heart of ice, that wasn’t going to know warmth anymore.


End file.
